Tag: adulthood | yr an adult

7 possible reasons why I just spent $35 on a weekday lunch

by Henry Goldman • October 17, 2012

Me and my friend/absent collaborator Andrew Brown often meet up on weekdays to get lunch. Usually, we go to a pleasant Chinese café on Church St, where the lunch special is a whopping $5.75. The lunches are often impromptu, based of text messages sent at 11 amto see if we’d each like to break out of the monotony of our given workdays and take an hour to gripe about all things everywhere always. Today, however, with San Francisco’s Indian summer[1] in full effect and the temperature hovering in the low seventies minus wind-chill, we decided that in this sweltering heat wave[2], a meal that a a little colder/less heavy was in order. So, we met up at the sushi place in the Metreon, with the charming patio overlooking Yerba Buena Park. It was such delightful setting that somehow we chocked up a bill of 70$ in 45 minutes without even thinking about it. Like idiots.

The meal was fine, but it wasn’t anything special. At no point was I either tempted to take a picture of an immaculately plated, superbly original dish nor did I shove a piece of sushi in Andrew’s face, like, YOU HAVE TO TRY THIS IT’S SO FUCKING GOOD OH MY GOD. So, in a moment of after-the-fact self-reflection, I thought I’d take a moment to consider a few possible reasons why I spent what is an empirically unreasonable amount on an unremarkable lunch.

… KEEP READING!

In the News

Quote of the day

by Henry Goldman • August 1, 2012

“Being an adult basically means being able to say, “Why don’t we just stay in and make dinner and maybe even save some money?” and not (always) look at your place as a set for fingerbanging.”

- From the VICE Guide to Adulthood, an excellent article which basically amounts to a long form, profanity-laced admonition to not be a fucking idiot all the time. (H/T Nicole)

Things I Don't Want To Grow Out Of

On growing out of dive bars

by Henry Goldman • July 31, 2012

We still like to call them just “dive bars”, but that isn’t the correct term. “Dive bar” is supposed to mean rough, working class, gritty. The neighborhood should be down-and-out, not up-and-coming. The clientele should be a mix of derelicts and drunks and the bartender should be indistinguishable from their patrons. A true dive has no attractive, young people anywhere in the vicinity. When people our age describe a bar as a “dive,” they’re probably using the word incorrectly. For our generation “dive” is used as an umbrella term to describe a bar that’s neither sports bar, brew pub or danceclub, where there is some sort of cheap American beer on tap (PBR, High Life, Olympia, Rainier, etc…) and where a good portion of the patrons/bartenders dress and act and are tattooed like hipsters. I don’t like the term “hipster” and I don’t like misusing the term “dive,” but I know that when I describe the bars that have always been my favorite bars as “hipster dives,” you probably know what I mean.

I mean the bars with veteran bartenders, whose only life accomplishment is figuring out how to only work 18 hours a week for the past fifteen years. Where sharpie-graffiti has been scrawled on every visible surface. Where the bathrooms are so disgusting it’s almost admirable. And where the cheapest beer is always the most popular. For my last 13 years of drinking, I’ve preferred drinking at these types of bars, romanticizing their applied shittiness, knowing that I had a better shot with the girls who would drink here as opposed to more bourgeois watering holes in whatever city I was living in. But now, as I grow older and wiser in my drinking, more susceptible to hangovers, more picky and prickly about where I drink, I’ve fallen out of love with my old favorite watering holes. I wanted to take a look at why I liked these bars then, and why, as I become an adult, they become less of the place for me to be.

… KEEP READING!

In the News

Email from my mom of the day

by Henry Goldman • July 26, 2012

This is what my Mom had to say upon reading my most recent post about weddings.

“when did you wake up blotto in a hospital?
I really like your blog, but I better not read it anymore. The laughs are not worth the angst.
Love,
mom”

cultural studies

Does ‘Girls’ get adulthood right?

by Henry Goldman • June 19, 2012

Does this get adulthood right?’ is a blog series where a yr an adult writer watches or re-watches or reads a cultural work about adulthood and consider whether it’s depiction of adulthood is reflective of real life. Past entries can be read here.

What’s the thing called? Girls. (You’re on the internet, so you’ve obviously heard of it)

When was the thing made? The showed debuted earlier this year, first to wide pre-release acclaim than to wide pre-release-acclaim-backlash, satirized BRILLIANTLY by my favorite writer in this hilarious blogpost (If you don’t bother clicking the link, the joke is I link you to my post about Girls. I’m my own favorite writer). The show just finished it’s first season and has been picked up for a second.

What’s the thing about? The show is about a small group of white 23/24-year-old girls, who are living out their post-college/pre-career lives in and around Brooklyn. They have weird friendships, pseudo-relationships, job troubles, uneasiness about their lives, petty disagreements. The show, ostensibly, over the course of several seasons, will depict it’s characters development from complete fucking idiots, to actual grown-ups. But for this first season, Girls has mined the humor of those first couple years out of college for the broken, silly depravity that marks the transition many middle-class college grads go through after college, but before they know what the fuck they are doing.

The characters are led by Hannah, an entitled, self-conscious wannabe personal essayist, in the mode of Sloan Crosley (if you don’t know who Sloan Crosley is, please don’t look her up. She’s the worst). Hannah thinks she’s the voice of her generation and is stuck fawning for most of the season over her weird/awesome fuck-buddy Adam. The other “girls” in the show are Hannah’s shallow rooomate Marnie, their naïve/oddball/virginal friend Shoshana, and self-styled manic pixie Jessa. Each episode follows their various misadventures and the series succeeds (in my mind) because it presents its character with a TON of flaws, and mines those flaws for humor.

… KEEP READING!

In the News

Quote of the day

by Henry Goldman • June 12, 2012

“To me, young has no meaning- something you can do nothing about, nothing at all. But youth is a quality and if you have it, you never lose it.”

-Frank Lloyd Wright, spotted here.

how to live your life

8 reasons why you shouldn’t bother buying a home

by Henry Goldman • June 8, 2012

Earlier this week, NPR had another bleak, the-world-is-sooooooo-fucked-up-for-young-people article about how millennials aren’t buying houses like previous generations (forwarded by Andrew Brown, yr an adult’s moral conscience). They explain this trend by rehashing all the other bad news millennials are faced with; there aren’t any jobs, credit is impossible, real estate is either prohibitively expensive or in regions with no economic prospects. Also, since millennials are sooooooo entitled and want the freedom to pick up and move whenever they feel like, they’re not even thinking about owning their own home. It’s depressing news, which is why I felt compelled to look on the bright side, to help you, dear reader, to consider it a blessing that you’ll probably never be able to afford you’re own home. Below is a list of reasons why you shouldn’t bother owning a home, because it mostly sucks. Don’t say I never made you feel better. .

1.) Owning a house is, like, a job in itself. Every Sunday is another trip to Loews for new fixtures or appliances. If you live in an apartment and you have a shitty kitchen, you just have a shitty kitchen. And your life is pretty much the same as it would be after you could have spent $50,0000 and 700 hours making your kitchen awesome. Think about it. What do you want to do this weekend? Watch Prometheus, go get drunk in the park, watch Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final and play ‘Cards Against Humanity’? Or do you want to get in an argument with your girlfriend/boyfriend in the drapery section of Home Depot?

… KEEP READING!

cultural studies

Does ‘Community’ get adulthood right?

by Henry Goldman • May 16, 2012

What’s the thing called? Community

When was the thing made? The show premiered in 2009 and is nearing the end of its third season.

What’s the thing about? Community is about the relationships between a the members of a study group at a fictional community college in Greendale, Colorado. Each character in the group comes from a different background and has enrolled at the college in attempt to get their lives back on track. As the series has progressed, the group has become tighter knit while the show itself has gone off the hinges, getting weirder, crazier and more self-referential. Many episodes play either as homages to different movies or genres while others are inverting generic sitcom the tropes. Despite being one of weirdest sitcoms in the history of network television, Community still hinges on the emotional growth of the characters at the heart.

… KEEP READING!

cultural studies

Am I too old to be excited about stupid summer movies?

by Henry Goldman • May 4, 2012

So, I’m going to go ahead and apologize, in advance, in the public eye of yr an adult, to my girlfriend, for dragging her to the see The Avengers this weekend. I should also apologize for making her watch Iron Man 2 on TV, last night. I mean, I admit that that movie was excessively dumb. Also, I’ll admit that Thor, from last summer, might have made us both stupider. And that there is no reason to watch the reboot of Spiderman coming out fourth of July weekend, but that I will be going to see it regardless (probably not opening weekend). At this point, it should be obvious that I am one of those 29-year-olds, who still get excited about 200-million dollar summer popcorn movies. Which begs the question, is it even OK for (new) adults to be (overly) excited about entertainment that has been produced to entertain 15 year olds?

… KEEP READING!

personal journals

9 things I wish I could tell my college self

by Henry Goldman • April 24, 2012

Most of the people who read this blog are post-college, or at least the age of post-college folks, but I know a few of you “new adults” are still actually matriculating, so this post is primarily directed at you. I had an awesome time in college, I learned a fair amount in school, I made a handful of friends who I will keep forever and I grew up (some). I also got to spend 4 years, summers included, in Montreal, which is one of the best cities the world. For that, I am forever grateful.

That being said, looking back at the experience, I can’t help but feel there are some things I wish I’d done differently, which would have affected my immediate post-college life and possibly my life as it is, now. Like the song goes, I wish I knew what I know now when I was younger. So, after considering how hard it is for kids fresh out of school these days, I thought I’d share a little bit of real talk that that I would tell my younger self, if that was possible and hope it will give you kids a leg up on your peers once you get out.… KEEP READING!

Role Models

Andrew Brown invites people to his birthday, like a boss

by Henry Goldman • April 12, 2012

In our older age, nothing is more demoralizing than not having people show up to help you celebrate your birthday. What. That was hyperbole. There’s a whole ton of things that are more demoralizing; vaving your less talented peers make way more money than you, clearly not being good at the thing you most want to do, the 40% chance (according to Nate Silver) that Mitt Romney might be the next president of america. But celebrating your birthday with only two other people, after you invited thirty, that’s pretty bad. That’s why I wanted to dive into the archives of my gmail to share contributing editor, Andrew Brown’s, past two birthday invitations, to demonstrate how it’s done in this day and age.

… KEEP READING!

Video

Video: Ze Frank tries to inspire you/himself

by Henry Goldman • April 10, 2012

This is the first video in Ze Frank’s new webseries, composed as a video poem, an invocation for someone who hasn’t begun the thing they’re trying to start. For him, it’s this series. And if you don’t know who Ze Frank is, he’s the first guy to ever really videoblog. And he recently announced he was coming back, do it again, raising $150,000 in a couple of days on kickstarter. Anyways, I thought this was nice.

cultural studies

Obscure buzzbands are terrible for dance parties and/or making friends

by Emily Pinkerton • April 4, 2012

Not too many years ago, I was what you might call a pretentious music snob. I bought imported vinyl from new bands, and out-of-print pressings from those long disbanded (Modern Lovers b-sides, anyone?) Not only did I DJ at my college radio, I had the top listenership. And I was on the board of directors.

I took great pride in knowing more about music than any of my friends. I became an obsessive consumer and curator of taste. I could instantly pick out new bands worth listening to from the ones that were mediocre or just weren’t going to be around in a year. But one day, I realized something: I wasn’t having fun. Everything I knew told me I shouldn’t enjoy the music that made me feel the best, and I didn’t want to relate to the people who knew the random obscure crap that I couldn’t believe I was saying.

But here’s the thing.

… KEEP READING!

Tag Archives: adulthood